#formshaper

armand

go to www.tumblr.com/formshaper and load up the muse list there,,,

the small room appears more wine cellar than living quarters, although the thin mattress in the corner suggests that someone does sleep in here. or not sleep, he supposes. the freezing stone and tiny, high window does remind him of...

the shackle rattles when he nudges it. the iron is so cold that it hurts his fingers. they don't choose to sleep down here, then. just like -

he startles guiltily when he hears the door open and he stumbles to his feet with all the grace of a young man who had been, until ten minutes ago, pleasantly buzzed on the wine that flows freely upstairs. he's sobered unpleasantly quickly but his head is still spinning, making the room rock around him. like he's back on the ship, except he hasn't been on a ship in years, has he? this room is just a room, not a prison, and if astarion spends any time at all down here it must be for a reason, and only ever temporary.

Riona: -found families the nightmare-

Everything is mostly the same except Frank gets parole for some reason and a part of that is a requirement of legit employment. Except, see, it’s hard to get a job with a felony that isn’t something fashy adjacent (the local airsoft and paintball shops want him bad tho)

enter the tiny little Vietnamese coffee shop. It’s almost literally a hole in the wall, barely more than a stand.

they serve two things: Vietnamese coffee and croffles. The croffles have topping additions. The Vietnamese coffee comes one way. Frank is making croffles in the back— the owners son went away to college, and his wife had an “accident” (we’ll get back to this cause it’s gonna be “handled” by Frank later, you better bet). A complication from the “accident” requires the owner to leave, and suddenly Frank has to manage “front of house” while also making croffles

darcy is an addict. Originally just for the coffee but one day the owner convinced her to try a croffle and it’s all been downhill from there. Atleast one a day, sometimes up to three. She has a problem.

you thought Darcy was going to be the one working the coffeeshop huh

goes about the same way we had it before. Darcy recognizes him, has her “I disagree with you fundamentally but whew you’re gorgeous wtf” moment. They’re abrasive to eachother. But Darcy is addicted and Frank has to keep covering the shop every couple of days.

he brings Max! Darcy is in love with one handsome dog

The room is pitch-black. Neither creature is hindered by this, but the Corinthian flicks on the light when it enters anyway; it likes the awful yellowing effect they have on a room already stained by years of cigarettes, and it likes keeping up appearances. The light flickers a little but stays on.

Usually he’d come back to a bound, helpless thing to play with. Maybe shut in the bathroom, chained to a radiator or thrown in the tub. Not so with this one. Cid will never let himself be bound and the Corinthian has learned that there is only so far he can push before his little monster will say fuck this, enough, and leave.

He sits cross-legged on the end of the bed to watch him and waits.

The sun is almost entirely over the horizon by the time Cid wakes, his body answering to some internal clock the Corinthian lacks. He is groggy at first, face still covered in dried blood from the night before; he goes to scrape it off with the heel of his palm then frowns and licks that same hand and squints at the Corinthian.

“I thought that was a dream. It wasn’t, was it?”

“I’m a dream,” the Corinthian says vaguely. It is not an answer but Cid usually doesn’t bother pressing for them. Slowly, like any stalking hunter, he moves up the bed and over his companion. Smaller than him but broader in the torso, Cid is at once scrawny and strong; certainly strong enough to throw the Corinthian off, if he wants to.

He doesn’t. He shifts a little to get comfortable and looks suspiciously up at the nightmare hovering over him. The Corinthian’s open jacket brushes his sides. Cid tilts his head up; not in expectation of a kiss, but to let his nightmare see his eyes. They are the same as they always are: restored after a day’s sleep, the irises pitch-black save for little flecks of grey and green.

“Good as new,” it purrs at him, and strokes just over his cheekbone with one hand. Its weight is perfectly balanced on the other. “You’re not still hungry, are you?“ A taste of nightmare usually keeps him satisfied a while - longer than his usual prey. But not forever. The Corinthian has plans for the night that do not involve his companion—Cid gets bored if he has to watch the flirting and the sex that comes before the hunt—but before that… “You wanna go again?”

yeah. yeah... i think this is how my lestat feels about him. although i also don't think my lestat is quite capable of "hating" him he just tries really hard not to think about him. it's complicated--

[ dream vc: I can’t take you anywhere because you go into guard dog mode when someone looks at me wrong— ]

His whole face creases in a very familiar baleful sulk, capped off by the wide lenses that--while sometimes making him look preternaturally eerie--here and now only succeeded in giving him an expression that could only be described as:

8(

He fidgets, one boot heel digging into the carpet and one hand busy adjusting glasses that hardly needed it.

"I behave all the time," he mutters, too nervous to argue. "I haven't touched a hair on a single guest," one eye says, and, "I was made smarter than that, my lord," says the other.

The fact that he's not getting congratulations for just how hard he is trying to behave is a tragedy.

He sighs soulfully like a melancholic hunting dog that doesn't know what to do with itself inside.

"is that so?" armand asks flatly. in the back of his mind, amadeo howls for riccardo and bianca and all the boys put to the fire. outwardly, armand blinks passively, considering the almost-man-shaped thing before him. not quite man-shaped, he thinks, because he gets the faintest impression of a skull when he blinks.

"illuminate me, then," he dares, probing the thing's mind. amadeo only howls more loudly, and so armand, in a rare display of compassion, withdraws. still, he has been snared by his own curiosity. he has never met anything like this before, and he won't rest until he's turned it inside out and learnt everything about him that he can.